Science & Tech

Our universe is ‘trapped inside a black hole’, worrying new research claims

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Have we been inside a black hole all this time?

Our universe has been around for and estimated 13.8 billion years but despite the exploration of space beginning almost seven decades ago, 95 percent of the cosmos is still undiscovered.

Thanks to the James Webb Telescope (JWST), scientists are able to use infrared tech to capture and focus light to see further into space.

Following its launch from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana in 2021, the JWST has collected data on how stars and planets form, as well as water vapour in planet-forming disks, and it has detected carbon dioxide emissions from Jupiter’s Europa moon.

A scientist has now claimed there may be evidence suggesting our entire universe is trapped inside a black hole. Lior Shamir, Kansas State University professor of computer science, believes the JWST has captured images could be evidence of this theory.

NASA released the first official image the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy in 2022Getty

Shamir analysed images for the telescope’s Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) and published the findings in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. In the paper Shamir outlines how he employed a computer-aided quantitative method to analyse images of galaxy rotations captured by the equipment.

He reported that out of the 263 galaxies in the JADES field, two-thirds rotated clockwise, while approximately one-third rotated counterclockwise. Typically, the number of galaxies rotating in one direction should mirror the number spinning in the opposite direction, making Shamir's discovery an unexpected finding, according to a press release issued by Kansas State University.

“The analysis of the galaxies was done by quantitative analysis of their shapes, but the difference is so obvious that any person looking at the image can see it," the study’s lead author said.

"There is no need for special skills or knowledge to see that the numbers are different. With the power of the James Webb Space Telescope, anyone can see it.”

Shamir has put forward two possible reasons as to why our universe’s galaxies are spinning clockwise.

“One explanation is that the universe was born rotating. That explanation agrees with theories such as black hole cosmology, which postulates that the entire universe is the interior of a black hole.

“But if the universe was indeed born rotating it means that the existing theories about the cosmos are incomplete.”

Shamir’s research was backed by theoretical physicist Nikodem Poplawski from the University of New Haven.

"I think that the simplest explanation of the rotating universe is the universe was born in a rotating black hole," he told Space.com.

"A preferred axis in our universe, inherited by the axis of rotation of its parent black hole, might have influenced the rotation dynamics of galaxies, creating the observed clockwise-counterclockwise asymmetry."

Shamir suggests that the higher number of galaxies rotating in the opposite direction could be due to the "relative motion of the Milky Way", which makes them appear brighter because of the Doppler Shift.

The Doppler Shift occurs when the source of a wave moves relative to an observer.

Shamir also notes that he might be wrong, and the universe could have more galaxies rotating in the same direction.

He’s calling for astronomers to reconsider the Milky Way’s motion in their measurements, as this could help explain other cosmological puzzles, like discrepancies in the universe's expansion and the age of large galaxies.

“The re-calibration of distance measurements can also explain several other unsolved questions in cosmology such as the differences in the expansion rates of the universe and the large galaxies that according to the existing distance measurements are expected to be older than the universe itself.

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